Physics Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 14)

Come One, Come All! Explore the Effect of Light on the Speed of the Amazing Rotating Radiometer!

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Radiometers are fun-to-watch novelty items, but they also have a distinguished scientific history, having been studied by James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. A radiometer has a set of four vanes (like small sails) connected to a spindle that is free to rotate. When the radiometer is placed in bright light, the vanes and spindle start to spin. It looks like a magic trick, but there is a scientific explanation for this weird behavior. In this science fair project, you will experiment with… Read more

Create a Sea Breeze

STEM Activity

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A hot summer day is the perfect time to go to the beach and cool down in the brisk ocean water. But it's not only the water that has a cooling effect at the beach. Have you ever noticed that there always seems to be a cool breeze blowing from the ocean to the shore? Where does the wind come from? In this activity, you will build a model of the ocean and the beach to find out—so next time you go to the beach, you will know why the sea breeze is blowing! Read more

Cricket Wicket Knockdown Challenge

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

In this cricket-inspired engineering challenge, you will build a machine to launch a ball and knock down a target (called a wicket). How many times can you knock down the wicket in three minutes? Teachers, lesson plan versions of this challenge are also available. Read more

Crime Scene Science: Solving Mysteries by Investigating Blood Stains

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Do you enjoy watching mysteries or crime investigation shows? Every criminal leaves behind evidence at the crime scene. The trick to catching the criminal is collecting all of the evidence and making sense of it. This is what a forensic expert does. In this bloody, Halloween-themed science activity you’ll be correlating the size of blood stains to the distance they fell, but don’t get too grossed out; you’ll be doing it with fake blood. If you like figuring out mysteries, this… Read more

Dancing Water Droplets

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Do you like watching raindrops on your window as they move and run down the glass? It is fascinating to observe how some of them just sit there by themselves, whereas others combine to build a larger drop. Have you ever wondered what makes them move and behave in different ways? Controlling and influencing wetting, the spreading of liquids on surfaces, is actually important for many industries. For some purposes, you want a surface to repel a liquid; just think of your water-repellent jacket as… Read more

Distance and Constant Acceleration

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Have you ever dropped something and wondered how fast it was moving while falling? If it was something fragile, like a cell phone, you might not have been thinking about this at the time — you may have been too busy trying to grab the phone! But you probably wanted to find out just how hard it hit the ground afterwards. We know that gravity forces an object to fall, but how does this affect how quickly something falls and how hard it hits the ground? For example, did the phone move faster… Read more

Distance and Speed of Rolling Objects Measured from Video Recordings

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

This project is an experiment in classical physics. You'll be following in Galileo's footsteps, and investigating Newton's laws of motion, but you'll be taking advantage of modern video recording technology to make your measurements. Sure, it's been done before, but if you do it yourself, you can get a firm understanding of these important concepts. Read more

Ears: Do design, size and shape matter?

STEM Activity

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Have you ever been puzzled by a faint noise nearby, trying to discover what it is? Maybe you turned your head or cupped your hand behind your ear, hoping to hear the sound better. What if we could make this cup huge? After all, some animals with exceptional hearing have big ears, like a serval (a type of wildcat), which can hear a mouse wiggling its way underground. Birds are even believed to use their entire head as an outer ear. In this activity, you will design and test your newest hearing… Read more

Electric Play Dough

Lesson Plan Grade: 4th

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If you love doing arts and crafts with your students, this lesson plan is for you! Teach them about energy, electricity, and circuits as they build light-up sculptures, using something they are all familiar with—play dough! Clear step-by-step instructions are provided and no previous experience with circuits is required. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

4-PS3-2. Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.

Evaporative Cooling with Liquids

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Have you ever wondered why we sweat when our environment is getting hot or when we exercise? Sweating is a life-saving strategy that cools our body down and maintains our body temperature. Without sweating, our body cannot regulate our temperature, which can lead to overheating or even heatstroke. But why does sweating have a cooling effect? The answer is evaporative cooling. Turning a liquid such as sweat from its liquid state into a gas requires energy. This energy is taken from our body, or… Read more

Physics Projects, Lessons, Activities (289 results)

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